Justin Klinger, Dec 9, 2021 9:07:00 AM
Manufacturers of food and non-food products have a lot to consider when weighing their options between in-house processing and toll processing services.
For one, how many processes can you keep under one roof? Often, manufacturers search for a toll processing partner based on just a single step or capability. After all, it’s essential to know that your toll manufacturer is the best at what they do.
But you could have plenty to gain by taking a second look at your toll processor’s across-the-board capabilities. For example, if your trusted vendor for herbal processing and extraction technologies also offered liquid filling and contract packaging, the impact on your products’ margins and your business’s bottom line could be significant.
Think about it: if you could trust a single, GMP-certified specialist for everything from botanical extraction and blending to liquid bottle filling and final packaging, how could that supercharge your operations?
There are plenty of reasons to talk to your toll processor about liquid filling solutions. Let’s take a look at 11 of the most important.
1. Save Time
When you establish a relationship with a toll processor and integrate their work into your timelines (and your work into theirs), one of the first savings you realize is time. Whether it’s thanks to their feedback on optimal quantities, their expertise on process optimization, or their experience coordinating and managing projects, the potential to save time on projects is real.
When you add liquid bottle filling to a fluid processing project, that potential for time savings is even greater. You can eliminate days lost to handling, transportation, receiving, and more, and quickly get your bottled and packaged product to your customers.
2. Optimize Efficiency
When you bring your toll processor onto a project and share a broader end-to-end vision with your project teams, it improves communication. In turn, that helps your tolling partner prioritize objectives according to your point of view — and by entrusting one partner with multiple steps, you actually gain tighter control over the manufacturing process. This is exactly what you stand to gain when your toll processor can formulate and blend your product, and then take it from bulk quantity down to final bottled product formats and sizes.
3. Keep Waste to a Minimum
Every step you eliminate from a process brings the opportunity to generate and handle less waste. Consider plastic film, protecting bulk packaging for shipping, extra labeling, and more. Every handling step also presents an opportunity for product loss due to spills, damage, and even possible contamination in shipping, receiving, and handling between steps.
When your processor is also your custom contract liquid bottler, those extra opportunities for waste are minimized. That means more product makes it to the customer, less waste is generated, and your profit margin reaps the reward.
4. Minimize Risk of Cross Contamination
Contaminated product is every manufacturer’s nightmare. One of the most effective ways to reduce risk of cross contamination is to minimize product exposure. Your tolling partner should prioritize hygiene protocols and product purity as much as you do, and if your toll processor also offers liquid bottle filling with a validated Clean In Place (CIP) process, you can trust them to handle your sensitive products, including food and pharmaceuticals.
5. Reduce Freight Mileage
The miles your products travel matter. They contribute to cost, carbon emissions, risk of loss, pollution, energy consumption, labor hours, and much more. When your toll processor is also your contract liquid bottler, you can cut the miles from bulk manufacturer to product packager down to zero.
6. Limit Administrative Burdens
How many hours do your administrative employees spend managing and coordinating projects between multiple service providers? How much cost does that labor add to your products — or more accurately, how much does all that extra work chip away at your products’ profit margins? When your administrative staff can do more with fewer vendors, there’s less back-and-forth, simpler billing, more streamlined communication, and maybe even happier employees.
7. Qualify a Single Vendor in Your Quality Management System
And make it a vendor that prioritizes quality as highly as you do. You put a lot of time and effort into integrating each of your vendors within your quality system. Whether it’s ISO 9001, FSSC 22000, or another system, it’s crucial to get as much value as you can from any vendor you qualify. By adding a downstream service like liquid bottle filling, you get maximum value from a trusted, quality system qualified vendor.
8. Rely on Their GMP Certification
Manufacturers in the food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, supplements, and nutraceuticals industries are well aware of the value of finding GMP certified contract manufacturing partners. For products that need to be bottled after manufacture, bottling at your toll processor can save you a lot of trouble sorting through GMP certified contract bottle filling companies to look for a match. You already know they’re a match if they’re your toll processing partner.
9. Take Advantage of In-house Testing and Analysis
The right tolling partner and liquid bottler can even perform your most important product quality testing in-house, with services including high performance liquid chromatography, particle size analysis, microbial testing, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and much more. If your products require batch testing and reporting, your choice of contract processor can streamline and simplify your processes even further.
10. Minimize Overhead
In addition to the capital expenditure of specialty bottling lines, associated costs add up fast: real estate, equipment operators, specialized engineers and/or material scientists, maintenance, spare parts, insurance, and much more. Trusting your tolling partner to handle the details and keep equipment running optimally is not only easier than doing it all on your own; it may be more cost-effective, based on equipment demands.
11. Save Money
It almost goes without saying that working with a toll processor can save you money. But when you take advantage of a service like GMP certified, FDA-registered liquid bottle contract filling services, your toll processing projects can result in even greater cost savings.
How much?
The best way to answer that question is to start a conversation with your toll processing partner.
Is Contract Liquid Bottle Filling Right For Your Next Project?
Look for a toll processor with material expertise AND the right bottling capabilities to handle a wide range of viscosities and formulations including water-based, solvent-based, lipid-based, and even waxed-based products serving industries, including:
- Food and beverage
- Pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and over-the-counter (OTC) products
- Personal care, cosmetic, and home care
- Industrial, automotive, and agricultural chemical
- Laboratory products
- And more
Learn more about what to look for in an all-in-one provider of custom toll manufacturing and contract liquid bottle filling when you download our free infographic guide, Contract Liquid Bottling Services: GMP Custom Bottle Filling for Pharma, Beverage & More. Click the link below to claim your copy today.
